


The Illusion of Control

by Rigil_Kentauris



Series: Series I [1]
Category: Alpha Protocol, Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Genre: Archiving, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-21
Updated: 2016-11-21
Packaged: 2018-09-01 07:14:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8614624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rigil_Kentauris/pseuds/Rigil_Kentauris
Summary: A/N: Put in Series I for critical problems with power dynamicsPost-Alpha Protocol and Pre-dxhr, ≈2010-2017. Crossover timelines are so FUN, aren't they!





	

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Put in Series I for critical problems with power dynamics  
> Post-Alpha Protocol and Pre-dxhr, ≈2010-2017. Crossover timelines are so FUN, aren't they!  
> 

Thorton tried to hand Leland the stack of papers for the third time that day – facts, figures, cost benefit analyses and risk factors. Pointless. Insulting. He’d had them memorized weeks ago. Not that he didn’t understand the why of it – appearances, after all must be kept. He taught Michael that much, and he supposed, now that he was really thinking about it, he wasn’t annoyed by gesture itself.

It was the impatience, he decided, the slight twitch darting across the man’s lips, the curl of his fingers and the almost audacious tapping of his foot. It was the momentary lack of trust signified by his continued attempts to force the bundle into Leland’s hands.

Without a binder, at that.

“It’s a business meeting, Thorton” he told him, but took the files anyway, more for Michael’s sake than anything else. He would review them – _if_ they needed reviewing – on the flight to Detroit, “With an _idealist_ , no less.”

Did he even get a ‘thank you’ out of it? Of course not. Michael only stalked back over to his customary spot behind Leland’s elegant wooden desk, and surveyed the New York City skyline through the spotless window panes. A familiar pastime. A pastime which, if he was being honest, had sparked the acquisition of the newest Halbech property. Leland could work anywhere, with anything, he’d proven that trying to hold his company together while shuttling between the derelict hole in the ground Alpha Protocol dared to call a headquarters, and his multiple international offices. He’d done most his work on planes, in airport lounges, he could work anywhere, but Michael…

“What if he isn’t?” Michael muttered, keeping his eyes fixed on a jet dipping through red evening clouds. Leland didn’t like flying, avoided it when possible, yet, again, there was Michael to think about, and he wasn’t good with trains. A familiar frustration began simmering – always, with the _needs_ -

He felt the glare before he saw it, Michael’s hard green eyes digging into the top of Leland’s head. Leland flexed his fingers, unwrapped them from the handle of the briefcase, studied them as the blood washed back into his knuckles. He held it up, comparing it to Michael’s darker skin, a beam of light catching both of them with sunset scarlet and rendering the experiment moot.

“That _is_ why we’re going, yeah? To figure this guy out?”

Leland ran a hand along his temple, pressing away the start of a headache, then tucking a tuft of grey hair behind his ear. Michael watched, waiting, as always. What had happened, Leland wondered briefly, to his _initiative_ -

Take it up with him later.

Leland circled the desk, pulling open a drawer and lifting Michael’s custom Halbech silenced pistol out from under Appointment Notebook Three. He held it out to Mike, who shook his head and returned his attention to the window.

Leland didn’t need this right now. He required acquiescence. This meeting was important, and he needed _Michael_ Michael – the Michael of instinct, and attention, the one who would have already stowed the pistol somewhere it could be conveniently carried on board sans a difficult discussion with security. He moved closer behind, until there was hardly any space between them, until he could feel the heat even through the shirt and suit jacket and Michael’s own grey sweater, plus whatever armor R &D had seen fit to saddle him with this week. Then he laid two fingers on Mike’s waist, freezing immediately when Thorton flinched away from him.

_Of all the days._

It was a lottery with him. Of course, it was Leland’s fault, partly, he knew it, the three months of Alpha Protocol, and the months of behavioral correction after that, he’d tried to apologize, to make it right, and usually, it was okay, things were fine, everything was fine.

Today was not one of those days.

He scowled at their reflections in the glass, at Thorton, yes, but mostly, at himself. His fault. Michael’s eyes were dull now. Today, of all days, was one of those days.

Months. Months of research, of following money trails, of pulling favors and attending conferences and having to study biomechanical this and visual cortex that, of memorizing the facts and figures and papers. Oh, he was going. He was going, and that was that.

“I’m taking Agent Clarkston,” he declared, turning swiftly, and grabbing his briefcase off the table. And Michael flipped around, as he suspected he would, pivoted and caught Leland’s wrist in his hand effortlessly. It wasn’t solely the relief and the being right that was making his skin feel warm under Michael’s fingers, it was that Mike never seemed to notice how fast he could be, sometimes breathtakingly so, astonishingly so, it was art, watching him move sometimes. At least it seemed that way, to Leland.

“You are _not_ taking _Clarkston_ ,” Michael growled, the insult ripping through the air, as it should, “Take this seriously.”

Leland wrapped a hand around the one on his wrist, abstractly pleased at the absence of flinching this time. “Forget Sarif. He’s a no one, nothing.”

Thorton severed their temporary physical connection, swiping the pistol from the desk, and strapping it into the holster buckled across his chest. Then he headed for the door, Leland in tow. Finally. Acquiescence and acceptance.

“It’s not Sarif I’m worried about,” he said, swinging the door open for Leland. “It’s the people behind him, the people you’re after, they-”

“They don’t know who and what we are, and they won’t – _if_ you behave properly.” He glared this time, putting all his displeasure at Michael’s antics today behind it, tightening his eyes in a frown and thinning his lips until the man beside him shrunk a little, and his steps faltered a bit.

“I’m sorry,” he said, in a very small voice, and for a moment, Leland felt bad, and he felt guilty, and memories of the needles and long nights and knives threatened to surface.

“You don't have to be sorry,” Leland allowed, hand stuck between going to fiddle with his tie, and retrieving Michael’s hand from where it hung in the air. He settled on neither. “Go get your dossiers, and your gear.”

“Okay,” Michael said.

Leland continued for the elevators, tried not to watch him leave. None of the lower level executives were here today to interrupt his thoughts, thoughts that were now centered around one thing.

 _Michael may be right_.

Leland had been on to the omnipresent ‘they’ for a good year, they the unnamed movers and shakers hiding behind every wall he’d been meeting lately. G22 had been after them too, before Leland had dismantled the organization. What files G22 did have were sparse, and would have been entirely unbelievable if it hadn’t been for the work Halbech had gone through to stumble upon them. The accusations – assassinating world leaders. Self-insertion into global powers. Influencing wars. He’d laughed out loud at the last one. He knew how difficult it was to pull that off correctly. Whoever they were, they moved through the world an invisible force, like gravity, but more powerful. Electromagnetism.

But everything powerful, even invisible power, left traces. You knew a thing had gravity not because you could see it, but because you could see what it affected, what it touched. You could see the planets orbiting. And David Sarif was a planet, orbiting…something. Someones. Them. He still wasn’t sure. Michael was probably right, doubtlessly, it was dangerous, recklessly so. To go and provoke them, to interfere with one of their satellites, to draw attention? Dangerous. But power, the kind he had, the kind worth having? It always was.

The energy was back, surging through him at the thought, making his feet feel light and his head lighter, the thought of the multileveled chess – no, Go – game he was playing, winning, in fact – it took them an entire team to execute a national leader and jumpstart a war. He’d done both by himself, he’d destroyed his opposition, changed the world. He didn’t need satellites. He didn’t need self-insertion into global powers. He _was_ a global power.

Or, he would be. As soon as he figured them out. As soon as he figured out if they, too, were opposition. As soon as he destroyed them, or joined them, or else transcended them, ideally. Meeting first, though. One thing at a time.

He blinked, and shook his head, clearing the thoughts as footsteps approached from behind. Michael. He stepped around Leland, and pressed the unlit elevator button.

How embarrassing.

“One thing at a time,” Thorton said, echoing Leland’s own thoughts and causing him to smile. Perhaps today would be a good day, after all.

 

* * *

 

“I don’t like him,” Darrow pronounced from the screen for the third time that evening. He had a sometimes frustrating, sometimes hilarious knack for paranoia. Everyone _had_ to be out to get him! Sure, he understood where it came from – Darrow rolled with powerful people, and to hear him tell it, they weren’t all of them that nice. And, boy, did Darrow like talking about it. _You’ll understand one day_ this, and _you need to be careful about such-and-such_ that. Jesus, like he was a little kid! Although, when he really thought about it, he couldn’t be annoyed with the – god, they _were_ lectures, weren’t they?

He did, however, wish Darrow would trust him a little more. He was grown man with a company that was doing well and well on its way to changing the world by now. Darrow didn’t have to tap his fingers on the edge of his chair like that, one hand constantly in motion, the other wrapped around the end of the carved wooden armrest. And every time he made a particularly judgmental remark, he jammed one finger against his desk, one tap for each word, _I_ -tap- _don’t_ -tap- _like_ -tap- _him_ -tap _._ It sounded silly, plus, it had to hurt.

There were some things flesh and bone fingers simply weren’t meant to do.

“Fine. You don’t like him,” Sarif told him, “But c’mon – how bad can he be?”

It was the wrong choice of words. Darrow’s face darkened, his thin eyebrows dropping into so deep a scowl, they all but started to fold over his eyes.

“He’s a user,” he muttered, flicking his eyes to something off screen before returning them to their position somewhere above Sarif’s forehead. Did he _have_ to do that?

“He’s an _investor_ ,” Sarif protested, “That’s what they do.”

“Is that what _I_ did?” Hugh fired back, accent sharpening, like it always did when he was annoyed. Instantly familiar; he was usually annoyed about _something_.

Sarif ran a hand up his right arm. The scars and scabs from the shots and bloodwork and tests and tests and tests and _tests_ itched like mad. But it would be worth it. The designs for the prosthetic – augment, he reminded himself, regretting the slip – were fantastic, intricate, science-fiction, a testament to all the work they’d been doing. And it was very nearly do-able – what _he_ wanted, at any rate. The next generation. The future, in his hands. Literally.

Sarif’s sudden smile made Darrow scowl even more. You could barely even see his eyes.

“Athene doesn’t like him either,” he declared, as if it would make a difference.

Which it had. When he’d _first_ heard it, that is. From Athene herself. When he went and got her opinion about the situation, something he didn’t recall doing with Darrow.

“You been talking to Athene without me, Hugh?” His arm still itched but now it wasn’t just the scabs, it was the needing to have something in his hands to fidget with. He was sincerely regretting cleaning up the office, the piles of books here and there, the papers on side tables, and worst of all, the baseballs stashed in corners and under things and in drawers. Trying to be more of a CEO. Bad experiment. Duly noted.

“Good intentions, though,” he reflected, out loud.

Darrow huffed, and straightened in his chair. “Henry Leland most certainly does _not_ have good intentions.”

“Relax, Hugh. You’re not my father, and this isn’t high school prom.”

“Harumph.” Hugh made the noise in the back of his throat, already thin lips compressed together like a cartoon character, which was wildly amusing. If Sarif had to look at him right now, he would probably start laughing, which would only make it worse, kickstarting a dangerous feedback loop. He moved away from the screen, electing to cross over to the windows and study the dusky night outline of Detroit’s skyscrapers. Soon, the night would be total, and lights would spring to life in the buildings, pouring gold into the sky. The black of night and the gold of people going about their business despite it. Were there any more beautiful colors in the world?

He sighed, contented. His city. Home. The frontier. How different would this look, ten, twenty years from now, when he’d gotten all the kinks works out, when everyone had augmentations, when the future was here and now? And not just improving, elevating, balancing the playing field - what would the world look like when everyone could see, could take in the balance between night and light? When humanity as a whole no longer had to be afraid of falling, from any height, because, well, they were designed to take it? How would the world look when everyone could-

“David – if this is about money-”

Sarif threw up his hands, really annoyed now, the tranquility of the night outside the windows broken, he didn’t get it, did he?

“This isn’t about money, Hugh. I don’t _care_ if he’s got money, you _know_ that-”

“One of your more troubling flaws as a businessman,” Darrow interrupted.

“It’s not that I don’t care about the money, it’s that I care more about what he stands for. And Halbech, they’re working on some interesting stuff, Hugh. I know they’re military-”

“Which is another problem we’ve yet to touch upon-”

“-but that doesn’t change the fact that they’ve got some good people. I mean, look at what they’re doing – they’ve got more biomedical engineers than you have suits, and they’ve already gotten a working kind of subdermal who _knows_ what, because it’s all locked up with DARPA contracts, but what you _can_ see is incredible-”

He paused, and took another breath, because sure most of it was guns and explosives but when you got into their fringe work that was when things got good-

“-and that’s not even touching on the stuff they’re doing that we can apply today, to augmentations, to, to, well, actually, we could probably use the subdermal research too, if they’ve figured out something new about binding tissue and synthetic materials-”

The ideas were spinning faster than his mouth could catch them and deliver them to Darrow. Industrial armor for workers. Patterned skin, camouflage. Extrapolate it, think bigger. Pressure resistant diving augmentations to explore the bottom of the ocean. Space! Interstellar FTL augmented astronauts. No _Challenger_ , never again. He needed paper.

Darrow coughed loudly, and Sarif froze, halfway to his desk.

“You’re a good man, David. I still don’t like him,” he said, like the two had anything to do with one another. Sarif reached the desk, rummaged around in the drawers for a notebook, and then a pen, fingers colliding with a baseball he’d missed, ignoring it in favor of getting the pen free and on the paper, notes scribbling out over the surface. Finger pin. Good aug, bad aug? Maybe he’d make one. Maybe he’d get one. He lost more than enough pens to make it worthwhile.

“David.” Darrow commanded, dragging Sarif’s attention away from his sentence.

“If you don’t trust him,” he said, eyes caught between Darrow and his paper, “why don’t you stick around, screen him yourself?”

Darrow stroked his beard – did he _have_ to? – and Sarif flew back to his paper. What had he been writing? Something about Elon Musk, apparently.

Sarif could hear Darrow musing in the background, but he was already on to a rough mockup of a low/no pressure asteroid mining armor augmentation, and he didn’t care.

“Yes…that could work,” Darrow was saying. Or something like that.

“If that’ll make you happy,” Sarif offered, distracted. The problem now was temperature. Unless you could…maybe if the system was inefficient enough…? But that was a dumb idea. Wasn’t there a study…?

“David?” Darrow asked, watching Sarif hunched over his tiny paper. “David. _Sarif_.”

“Huh?” He looked up, looked around, blinked at the screen like he’d forgotten Darrow was even there.

Darrow slowly emphasized every word with a tapping pointer finger, just to be safe. “Call me before Leland arrives.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Sarif said, waved a hand at Darrow, and started tearing his desk apart. Probably looking for a book, or more likely, his newest e-reader.

Darrow sighed, rolled his eyes, and shut the connection off. He had some calls to make.

 

* * *

 

Leland settled into arrogance uncomfortably fast, almost as soon as they’d met Sarif, or maybe it was as soon as Sarif’d waved at them, said “ _hang on a second”_ and spent a full minute finishing a doodle of…well, Michael had no idea what it was, and probably neither did Leland, but if there was something Leland did understand, it was a snub and he took these things a little too personally sometimes, he could be touchy, but maybe it hadn’t been right then, maybe it had been after, when his fellow CEO had stood and offered a hand, when he’d realized that hand was still holding a pencil, when Sarif’d shrugged and smiled and stuck it behind his ear and a rubbed-off strand of eraser had detached itself and landed on an otherwise pristine black vest – maybe it was then. _Appearances must be kept, Michael._

Probably, it hadn’t been any of that. Probably it had been after Sarif had shaken Leland’s hand, and then, for some reason, thought it would be a good idea to hug Thorton-

That was certainly when Michael had decided to dislike him.

He’d been around Leland long enough to recognize the thin tense lines that signified the only public displays of anger he allowed himself. He could tell when a wide, forced smile concealed teeth that hovered a millimeter away from being clamped together. The complete motionlessness was a new one, but he could still tell what Leland was thinking.

 _I will ensure you regret that._

So, the arrogance. _We don’t tolerate idiots, Michael_.

It was better this way. When Leland dropped into full hunting mode, he started talking on two or three levels at a time, three or four sentences ahead, and following along got painfully tricky. Now, Michael could instead hover at the back of the spacious office, tucked into the shadows between two circular lamps on glass tables and scan the room. He could focus on tapping out codes on the device in his pocket, could sit back and do his job tracking down the solid leads while Leland sussed out his phantoms.

Leland was being played, of course.

Darrow was Illuminati – Leland was a child with a lemonade stand crying and claiming to have business experience. Once Darrow had gotten Sarif in line, once he’d gotten him to wear an earpiece, once he’d gotten past the infolink speech for the umpteenth time, things had gone much smoother.

“Make him wait, establish the dynamic.”

“I don’t like it.”

Nonetheless, David had done as told. Made Leland wait and then gone through as formal as introduction as was possible, when it came to David. Then - why not? – he’d hugged the other one, the one in black slacks and a black jacket, with black secret service sunglasses pushed up in short black hair, and to top it off, one of those headsets with the curling wires sticking out of an ear. Possibly, Halbech could have been more dramatic. It was hard to imagine how. Darrow didn’t know why he’d ever worried about Henry Leland. The _dramatism_ , and he was immature, and worst of all, he was refusing to sit, standing instead behind one of the stout leather chairs that Darrow hated, resting his palms face up on the back, head tilted, talking over David’s head at the window, which meant he was _enjoying_ being dramatic and self-important.

It couldn’t have been more than ten minutes before Darrow’s patience with the situation broke down.

“You need to put an end-” he started, calling up what scant notes they did have on Leland, and then David pulled his earpiece off. He twisted it free in the middle of Darrow’s sentence, twirled it around a finger and dropped it on his desk.

Then he placed his hands on either side of the discarded electronic, and pushed himself into a standing position. “Enough with the interference, enough with numbers – you know mine, I know yours. Why’re you _really_ here?”

Darrow nearly choked; Leland smiled, gaze retiring from its sojourn over the cityscape to rest on David’s raised eyebrows.

“I wasn’t aware we had company,” he said, and this time Darrow did start coughing, because the other Halbech nuisance was focusing on one of the room’s cameras, one of the ones that was transmitting visuals across the continent to Darrow, one of the ones that _should_ have been hidden.

“There’s your guard, for one. And my guys-” David wiggled his fingers around his earpiece- “aren’t visible, but they’re here.”

The smile spread slowly. “You must _hate_ that! Appearances are so…useful.”

Darrow was concentrating so closely on the way Leland was leaning forward slightly over the chair back, the pads of his fingers starting to press in the leather, teeth starting to show under his lips, that he almost missed the quick tremor that ran through the bodyguard, throwing alert green eyes off their examination of the cameras for a moment. All his remaining attention was on the empty Halbech file. No photos, no transcripts, reports, these two, Halbech, this was a huge blind spot. It was disrupting the natural order of things in a way that was distinctly uncomfortable, like gravity failing all of a sudden.

“Well, if you’ve got better ideas…I wanna know. You and me. Let’s talk.”

Even if Darrow _had_ been giving his full attention to the situation devolving in front of him, he still might have missed it. The way Leland turned his head and gestured, the way his guard was already slipping through the shadows and out of the office, the way the two things were so fast, they seemed to happen all at once.

As it was, all Darrow knew was that one minute, he was flipping through frustratingly blank pages, and the next, staring up at a silenced video feed, Sarif’s earpiece swept off into a drawer, the enemy agent gone god-knows-where –

No. Not gravity failing. Gravity working, knocking you off the building, but when you hit the ground you kept going, merging with the pavement and dirt and mantle and this? This could be bad.

If left unchecked.

Good thing he had people for that.

First things first – getting remote access to the _other_ audio/visual recording devices implanted in Sarif’s office. The ones he didn’t know about, and therefore, the ones he couldn’t impulsively disable.

 

* * *

 

There’d been an odd pinging noise in his earpiece, and some feedback that probably shouldn’t have been there. It was probably nothing – no, not probably. It was nothing. Unless it was something. As Darrow was fond of pointing out at every possible opportunity, corporate sabotage happened all the time.

As did corporate espionage.

“I can’t imagine a company like yours has much trouble with security breaches,” Leland said, settling into the leather chair like he owned it, and Sarif felt his hand twitching slightly.

“Everyone has enemies. We’re used to handling things,” he told Leland, the smile plastered on the guy’s face not helping Sarif convince himself the feedback was nothing.

“We?”

“Sarif Industries.”

Leland paused, watched Sarif cross his arms. Was he aware of the motion of his limbs? Or was he like a dog, with a tail he couldn’t control? Probably the latter.  Now that Sarif had freed himself from his desk, he was shifting his weight from on foot to another. The longer Leland sat and let the silence stand, the quicker the tempo. And while it would be interesting to how long Sarif could keep that up…

“Ah, yes,” Leland finally said, throwing him a metaphorical bone. Sarif’s attention snapped to Leland. “Although, it seems less like an industry…and more like a family. I imagine you’d do anything to protect it – them.”

It felt like a threat. It sounded like a threat. He’d better not be threatening the Industries. Sarif didn’t know what he’d do, but he’d do something, that was for sure. He’d never had a nemesis before.

“You see,” Leland continued on pedantically, “that’s one of the things you learn, working in security. How far people will go to protect what they care about. Or, how far they will go to get what they feel they deserve. What, exactly, do you think your Industries deserves?”

That was definitely a threat. Or an insult. Or…something. “What’re you implying?”

Leland watched confusion misalign David Sarif’s eyebrows. For someone who, reportedly, was supposed to be intelligent…

“Halbech,” Leland continued, “is actively hitting its targets. Improving American military force. International aid relief. Independent innovation. But you…you can’t be planning to stick with the Recycle Military Bill, drifting from governmental project to governmental project forever.”

“Believe me,” Sarif shot back, “we have plans. And we’re working hard on those, deserve’s got nothin’ to do with it-”

“92% of start-up tech companies fail, you know,” Leland interrupted. “Unless they have help.”

“Lemme guess – _you_ can be that help?”

“Do you _need_ help?”

Sarif paused. He didn’t want to look at Leland’s self-satisfied smile. The pressure of his eyes itched more than the scabs. The windows in the room were supposed to make the large space seem even more open to the world outside. Right now, Sarif would have given an arm and a leg to smash one of the panels open with a bat. Everything Leland was saying felt off, like he was talking to someone else entirely. Sarif didn’t understand it, and he didn’t like it one bit.

“What’re you here for?” Sarif asked sharply.

“I’ve already-”

“You came here looking for something. I know your guy was messing with communications. He’s probably trying to dodge security downstairs – how’m I doing so far?”

Leland smiled, leaned back, didn’t say anything. Well, two could play that. Stubbornly, Sarif mimicked him, both ignoring the sudden determined clattering of his phone in the desk.

Finally, Leland started speaking, smile still caught on his face.

“You’re an idealist,” he said. “You walk into your lobby, and see the future personified in baubles and lights and Greek mythology-”

“The future _is_ -”

“I, on the other hand, see the people themselves, those who make your ‘future’ possible. Your researchers, your customers, inspirations…

He paused. "...Hugh Darrow."

Anger flashed, distracting. “Hugh Darrow is a friend, and if you’re planning on dragging him-”

“I’m not planning on dragging anyone into anything, but if they’re already involved, well…”

“Sarif Industries is _mine_ , and no one else’s.”

“Of _course_ it is,” Leland said, dragging a hand through the air. “I _assume_ that’s why your name is plastered all over it. But – and you’ll learn this if you survive the business world for very long – no one’s affairs belong solely to themselves. No one is alone.”

“That why you got your bodyguard?” He was hitting low and he knew it, but damn it if he didn’t want to.

Leland’s eyes narrowed.

“I presume you are familiar with baseball, Mr. Sarif, even here in Detroit.”

“Yeah?”

“That’s strike two.”

“You keeping count? What was the first one?”

“I would be careful, if I were you, Sarif. People who don’t understand where their debts lie often end up paying for that mistake.”

Sarif gestured dramatically around the empty space. “I don’t see anyone here who’s gonna collect.”

“It's like you said. You can’t see them. That doesn’t mean they aren’t there.”

The melodrama of the statement, compared with furious glare in the corners of Leland’s eyes - worth a good laugh. “You let me know when you find them, yeah?”

“I already have,” he said.

Then Sarif’s phone buzzed for the third time, and he couldn’t – didn’t want – to ignore it any more.

Security, good. Caught the other one on the fifth floor. He hated hated _hated_ to admit, but Darrow had been right about this guy. Henry Leland had to go.

“Security just caught your guy wandering around our labs. Guess he wasn’t as alone as he thought he was. But – none of us are, right?”

Leland glowered, and Sarif enjoyed the feeling of momentary victory, and the very clear expression of _strike three_ being telegraphed across the room. “You can either go pick him up yourself,” he added, “or we can ship him down the block to DPD HQ. Your choice.”

He didn’t actually know if he could do that, but it was a good bluff anyway.

Or at least he thought it had been, until Leland shifted from sitting deep back in the chair to standing behind it in the space of a word, all the ire gone from his face, the light, condescending smile back.

“I’m not sure anyone would benefit from that.” He extended a hand. “I’m glad we had a chance to meet, Mr. Sarif.”

Sarif grabbed it with some doubt, justified doubt, it turned out, because as soon as he did Leland flipped his hand over and examined the microscars left over from butterfly needles, and the discolored squares from skin tests, and the faintest outline of ink from this morning’s impromptu filigree sketch.

“Augmentations?” he asked, and Sarif, surprised by the word choice, had to answer.

“Yeah. Sooner or later. We-”

Leland gave him his hand back, actually gave it to him, held it out and everything.  “Good luck with that.”

Then Leland sauntered out of the door, before Sarif could regain control of his mouth and tell him exactly what he thought of his ‘luck’.

Athene’s ringtone pipped from his phone, and he sighed. So she and Darrow had been right. Did they have to rub it in?

Especially now that he had work to do. No more Halbech subdermals. Solar sailer sun-surfing augmentations were gonna have to wait until he could figure it out himself -  until Sarif Industries could figure it out _themselves_.

He sat back down at his desk, pulled out his notes, tried to relax back into the rhythm of it. But the shadows seemed a touch too dark, and there was still a shallow depression in his chair, and he had better call security and make sure they were gone.

Hmpf. Idealist. As if having ideals was a _bad_ thing.

 

* * *

 

Thorton slid a black SD card across the seat. “Got it.”

“Good.” Leland picked it up, brushed the grooves on the top, looked it over.

Michael rested his head against the window. The streets moved by impatiently. “And you?” he asked Leland.

“Hugh Darrow,” Leland announced.

“Hugh Darrow,” Michael echoed.

The gold of the SD card’s AVR pins reflected the streetlights outside.

 

* * *

 

On the screen, David tossed another paper aside.

 _“Damn subdermal implants…”_ he muttered.

Hugh called up his keyboard.

\--We have a problem.

 

It only took a moment.

 

-Do we?

\--Halbech International

-Why?

\--…

\--They have the potential to cause us problems.

-Interesting.

In far away Detroit, David sighed and put his head down on the desk, toying with one of the crumbled sketches.

\--Look into it, Darrow instructed, and closed everything down.

**Author's Note:**

> "I write about people I hate even though I don't need that stress in my life" Part II: CEO Special Edition.


End file.
